S T A R & P L A N E T TERRESTRIAL PLANET FINDER NEWSLETTER Number 8, August 17, 2004 CONTENTS 1. TPF Project news 2. AAS San Diego Special Session on TPF 3. Second TPF/Darwin Conference 4. Reader survey 1. TPF Project news In the last Newsletter, we published an open memo from Charles Beichman, TPF Project Scientist, to the TPF Science Working Group, outlining NASA's plans to fly two missions to accomplish the TPF science goals: a moderate sized coronagraph, which we designate TPF-C; and the formation-flying interferometer (TPF-I) presently being jointly studied with ESA. The memo is available at: http://planetquest.jpl.nasa.gov/TPF/tpf_architectures.cfm This announcement has, not surprisingly, attracted a lot of interest in the astronomy community. The scientific motivation for two missions is twofold: to obtain spectra of detected terrestrial planets in both the optical *and* mid-IR bands, and to extend the total number of stars searched for terrestrial planets. While both wavebands include strong features for several molecules likely to be found in the atmospheres of extrasolar planets, the combination of wavebands provides a much more complete picture - especially since there is a wide diversity of possible atmospheres. And for planets with atmospheres and modest cloud cover, we get complementary information since IR primarily characterizes the atmosphere while visible sees down to planet's surface. NASA is developing plans to proceed with construction of TPF-C, as soon as the project demonstrates that technology needed by TPF has reached the necessary level of maturity. Budget and technology permitting, the Project plans to complete its pre-Phase A studies by fall of 2006, and will pursue a launch in about 2014. Later this year NASA will announce opportunities for the community to propose concepts for planet-finding instruments for TPF-C as well as for more general purpose instrumentation that might also be included in the payload. Development of the technology for a free-flying interferometer architecture (TPF-I) for mid-IR observation continues to be strongly supported by NASA. Scientific collaboration continues with ESA's Darwin mission which has essentially the same science goals. Currently ESA is planning to develop Darwin on a faster schedule than NASA's TPF-I, with a projected launch date of around 2015. Discussions between NASA HQ and with ESA management are continuing to assess how our collective goals for TPF-I and Darwin can be achieved most effectively and rapidly. More will be known about the options for the interferometer mission as the scope of the mission, available budgets and scientific priorities become clearer on both sides of the Atlantic in the next year. 2. AAS San Diego Special Session on TPF At the next winter meeting of the American Astronomical Society (San Diego, January 9-13, 2005) there will be a pair of special evening sessions, on Monday, January 10. The first will feature TPF, and will be followed by the one on the Space Interferometry Mission (SIM). For those readers not familiar with SIM, TPF's sister mission in NASA's Navigator Program, check out the SIM web site: http://planetquest.jpl.nasa.gov/SIM/sim_index.cfm SIM covers a broad range of topics in stellar and Galactic astrophysics. But its primary science goal - and its direct connection to TPF - is its astrometric search for Earth-like planets. SIM will observe essentially all of the likely TPF targets, and will inventory the contents of the planetary systems it finds. Most importantly, SIM will directly measure the *mass* of every planet it detects, down to a few Earth-masses for the closest systems. Mass is the most fundamental property of any astronomical body, so SIM provides unique information that will be combined with discoveries from TPF to advance our understanding of planetary systems and their member planets - large and small. At the TPF evening session in San Diego, we will update the astronomy community on two topics: (a) NASA's plans to fly two missions to achieve the science goals of TPF (see item 1 above, also Newsletter #7); and (b) to alert the community to continuing opportunities for research on scientific problems related to TPF and the field of extra-solar planet research especially the NASA 'ROSS' program. The SIM session will feature opportunities for observing time with SIM. We will arrange refreshments and perhaps a light dinner, so that folks can stay for both sessions. A description of the session may be found at: http://www.aas.org/meetings/aas205/events.html#tpf 3. Second TPF/Darwin Conference The Second Terrestrial Planet Finder/Darwin International Conference "Dust Disks and the Formation, Evolution and Detection of Habitable Planets" was held in San Diego, July 26-29, 2004. At the conference, there were 50 oral presentations and over 100 poster papers. The main theme was dust disks around stars, and their relation to planetary systems - topics that trace directly or indirectly into the science that TPF/Darwin itself will do. For those who wanted to attend, but were unable to, you will be pleased to know that we will make the talks and posters available on the conference website. Rather than publish a formal hardcopy proceedings, which takes substantial time and effort, we have opted to make the presented papers available to a wide audience more rapidly using the WWW. We expect to have the website updated within the next month. http://planetquest.jpl.nasa.gov/TPFDarwinConf/ 4. Reader Survey Is this Newsletter useful to you? It is intended to be informative for a technical audience - scientists and engineers interested in TPF, but not directly involved in the project. We will continue to focus on content rather than format, and maintain a fairly informal style. The Newsletter format is plain text, for maximum compatibility with a variety of mail readers. Would you prefer to receive HTML? Or an attached PDF file? Comments on the content and format, and items to be considered for inclusion, are welcome. Just hit 'Reply' to send comments to the list owner (the list is protected against accidental broadcast of replies!). -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Steve Unwin, Editor stephen.unwin@jpl.nasa.gov You are subscribed to the list 'TPF-announce'. To unsubscribe from this list, please go to the 'TPF Newsletter' link on the TPF web page where you can also find back issues of the Newsletter: http://planetquest.jpl.nasa.gov/Navigator/library/tpf_newsletter.cfm